stoops, noticing the woman has been here for some time. There is more decomposition and animal bites, and her eyes have been eaten out, and parts of her thighs and arms have been gnawed at. She’s been here a week maybe more, he thinks.
They continue on to the next one, same description: twenties, left hand surgically removed and missing, wearing a teardrop pearl necklace and ball gown. This victim is more recent, like the first one.
O’Malley looks over at Stein and then up at the Deputy. He looks around at each Deputy near him and rubs his face slowly, seven girls.
He had seen this type of site before and was hoping he would never see it again. He knows he will need Donovan’s help.
“What is this?” Stein asks.
He looks down at the girl and then slowly back up at Stein. “A killing field. We have ourselves a dumping ground and a serial killer.”
Duke joins them, coming through some foliage behind him, “The Captain is on her way, and with as many as she can get. It’s a holiday, remember. How many we got?”
O’Malley looks at the Deputy near him, “I heard six call out, Sir.”
“Seven. I want a ten-by-ten-mile radius perimeter, Duke, and no damn press!” He walks past Duke, heading back to his SUV, with Stein following.
“Have you worked a serial before?” Stein asks.
“Yeah, but not this bad, but I know someone who has.” Reaching the tape, he raises it and walks up to his SUV. He pulls a map from under a half-empty whiskey bottle from his glove box, opening the map on the hood and circles the area.
Captain Sarah MacBride pushes her way through the crowd of Deputies, her red hair emerging from the sea of brown hats like a beacon. Though she looks tough in her black business suit, the pink blouse she wears beneath offers a hint to her softer side. In her forties, MacBride has seen it all, and the stress shows in the wrinkles around her eyes as she yanks her sunglasses off. “What we got, O’Malley? Duke said all hands on deck.”
“We have seven bodies, anywhere from last night to maybe about a month ago. A dumping ground.”
Three more Deputies call out, “Make that ten.”
“Serial killer?”
“Looks that way. We’ll know more after CSU processes the scenes.” He circles another area on the map. “You know, if Donovan was still on the force, he could be a big help.”
She knew it was true but was not wishing to believe it.
Stein watches them and steps up to Duke, who has now returned to the base camp. “Who they talking about?”
“Donovan, O’Malley’s ex-partner,” Duke answers.
“I heard he retired.”
“She fired him. The best damn Forensic Psychologist and Investigator we ever had, ex-FBI. She didn’t like how he was handling a murder case two years ago, said she thought he was taking his sweet time. It was politics, and she fired him. It took O’Malley and six other Detectives from three nearby counties to catch the bastard, and it took almost another year…” He pauses seeing MacBride looking over. “He was right where Donovan said he would be. If she had let Donovan do his job in the first place, then we could have saved the other six girls of the eight that he had killed,” Duke explains in a fatherly way.
MacBride heard him, knowing he was right. “You’ll call him, right?” MacBride asks, trying to get on O’Malley’s good side.
Without looking up from the map, he says, “You married him, you divorced him, and you fired him. This is all on you, Sarah.” He picks up the map and walks back to Duke and Stein, showing them the map and the areas to search. Duke takes the map and heads off into the forest with several Deputies.
“Any word on CSU?” O’Malley asks.
“Right there,” Stein says, pointing over his shoulder as two black vans and a white one pull up. Four women and two men in light-blue jumpsuits labeled CSU climb out of the vans. One of the women with brunette hair just past her shoulders walks up to O’Malley. Her suit says Medical Examiner. She joins them at the first victim, where they have returned.
“I heard it’s a big one,” she asks.
“Duke will assign areas. We have ten bodies so far,” O’Malley says as he waves all but the brunette toward Duke. “This is victim one from what I can tell. She was dropped within the last twenty-four hours. We will know more from your reports. Some have been here for weeks. A few others, maybe a month.”
She stoops down and looks over the body as MacBride walks up.
“You got this?” MacBride asks, putting her cell phone back in her pocket.
“Yeah,” O’Malley replies without looking up and pulls out his cell phone.
“He is not answering, so I am going to have to find him,” MacBride tells O’Malley.
“Try the Roadhouse. I’ve seen him there a few times since the divorce. He has a trailer there,” he offers, still pondering over the scene.
She walks off, and Stein stoops down with gloves, picking up some small flakes of metal, yellow in color, near the severed wrist.
She puts them in an evidence bag from her pocket and passes it to the brunette. Their eyes lock, and they look each other over, hoping no one sees them, and smile. The brunette looks back down at the body and moves the head from side to side, pointing at the faint finger markings around the neck. “She has been strangled. I see no bloodstains, so she was not shot. I will know more once I get her on the table.”
O’Malley steps away from the body, dialing. “We have ten. She is coming to grovel…yeah.” He hangs up and puts it back in his pocket.
The CSU team passes by him again with their kits and gloves, a couple with masks covering their faces.
Returning back to the base camp, a tall African American man in his late fifties yells, “O’Malley?”
The years have not been good to him; we can see it around his face. As a black man, he has been through many trials to prove himself. Richard McKnight is the head of Forensics. He is bald, with a black goatee, and is wearing a nice black three-piece suit with vest and has two large rings on his left hand. He yells out and waves from across the dirt road. He is also wearing black-frame glasses. “I see my team is here. What you got?”
O’Malley raises the tape and walks toward him. He sees the Reporters down the road as he steps up to him. “Serial killer—we have found ten bodies so far, ranging from last night till about a month ago.”
“Well, Alice Roberts, the county’s M.E., best in her field, I see is on the case. Anything else my department can do, let me know,” McKnight says as he walks back to his nice, mint condition 1988 black Lincoln Continental town car. “And we sure could use Donovan on this!”
“She’s working on it,” O’Malley says. McKnight looks at him, with slight shock that MacBride is going to ask Donovan, knowing that was a first. She is one who never asks; she requires it, a virtue she has acquired since she made Captain and
